Past My Prime

What were you doing at this time last night? I'm guessing you were resting peacefully, hopefully having the sweetest of dreams.

Here's what I was doing:


To clarify, I was wrapping up priming the drywall on the first floor of the addition. The worst part of the job was, as it always is, the ceiling. Painting a ceiling requires that you keep your head back, supporting that heavy noggin of yours, while your shoulders also strain to control the roller, which in this project has the added joy of requiring balancing a 6-20 foot pole (extending to reach the part of the ceiling that's over the stairs) atop which the roller sits. I find this to be one of the most excruciating tasks of home improvement, for not only does it leave your entire upper body in a tangle of knots, but you end up walking into things because you aren't watching where you're walking. I almost knocked over the paint twice, acquired about 10 bruises, and 2 bloody gashes. As an added bonus, I ended up with paint in my hair and all over my bare arms and legs. In addition to skipping the common sense notion of wearing full body cover, I also ignored the warning on the primer to wear eye protection, figuring my eyeglasses were enough, but narrowly missed a splotch of runaway paint that bombed right past my lens and missed my left eye by a lash.

It occurred to me as I was wrapping up that it was nearly 10 years ago that I started working on this project I (now) call a house. Back in The Hadean Age, my daily routine consisted of working from 9-6:30 pm, coming home, having a bowl of cereal, changing into work clothes, and tackling some project until the wee hours of the morning, then wrapping up the day's work with a beer and a cigarette on the porch. I washed, rinsed, and repeated this daily cycle for about 2 years. Now I no longer smoke and avoid the front porch because of the crazy neighbors who are always on theirs. And until last night, I had forgotten about how good it felt to wrap up a day of hard labor with a cool bottle of good beer and (i'm sorry all you non-smokers) the delicious pulsing of nicotine through my veins, which had an amazingly restorative effect. Having neither item, I had to make do with another vice - namely wasting lots of hot water in an effort to soothe my poor, now ten-years-older body. I guess I should be happy that I can still pull off such late-night labors.

Anyway, things are starting to shape up, and I'm especially pleased with the way the exposed beam looks:


And now that the walls are primed, now all we need to do is pick out a shade of white to paint the walls. And then paint them.